Pentax K2000 / K-m Review

The entry-level DSLR sector has become argue ably the hardest-fought camera sector over the past year. Reduced-spec, cheaper DSLRs have appeared from all the major camera companies, looking to tempt compact camera users across to the 'will it fit in my pocket?' divide. Pentax has responded to this with the K2000/K-m. In most respects it's a smaller, friendlier K200D with a little less mass and a little more mass-appeal.

And, to Pentax's credit, they've taken very little away from the K200D and clearly spent a lot of time making it as user-friendly as possible. The on-screen control panel is very well done, making it easy to find and change all the key shooting settings and meaning the top LCD (one of the few K200D features that has been removed), is unlikely to be missed by many. The automatic scene mode selection feature (which is becoming increasingly common on compacts), is a nice touch, too.

So our first impressions of the K2000 were very positive - it's a well designed little thing with some of the best build quality in its class and a level of accessibility that makes it probably the best beginners DSLR Pentax has yet made.

However, the thing we liked least about the K200D - its JPEG engine - appears to have been inherited, unchanged from the old model, which is quite a drawback for a camera aimed at the first time user. The default bright, high-contrast and saturated look makes sense for this target audience (though they're a bit much for our tastes), but the poor level of detail if you examine the images closely puts the K2000 at the bottom of its class for image quality. We're also not convinced that the same users who want those punchy colors will be best served by the low levels of noise reduction (or that they'll find custom setting 12 to change it), and rather conservative metering. This isn't a problem for the more experienced user, of course, who is more likely to apply exposure compensation and be happy to shoot in RAW and process the images later to get the best out of them.

Richard Butler & Lars Rehm

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